In recent years, with the virtualization of open systems and servers, management of systems is becoming complicated. Consequently, using storage systems becomes common in terms of easily managing the systems or flexibly coping with a rapid increase in an amount of data.
In the storage systems, for example, performance adjustment of the storage systems is performed by adjusting the limit width of a bandwidth of a data transfer path between a volume and a server that executes an application. In a conventional technology, adjustment of the limit width of a bandwidth is performed by a storage system that receives an instruction from an administrator.
Furthermore, the following technology has been proposed as a method of adjusting the performance of storage systems. For example, there is a conventional technology that adjusts, by setting a target value from among a copying speed of the background, the completion time of the copying, and the response time received from front business, the parameter of another process in order to implement the target operation. Furthermore, there is a conventional technology that adjusts the cache size such that the response time is converged to a target value. Furthermore, there is a conventional technology that adjusts, by using a function of a fibre channel switch, a bandwidth that is allocated to an application when a set condition is satisfied. Furthermore, there is a conventional technology that equally allocates the usage rate of a line by adjusting a bandwidth and then cancels out the imbalance of the performance.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 06-250795
Patent Document 2: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2010-097526
Patent Document 3: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2004-199697
Patent Document 4: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2006-108955
However, when a single transmission path is shared by multiple volumes, conflict occurs in data transfer and thus it is difficult to implement the target performance. Accordingly, in order to implement the target performance, an administrator specifies a volume in which the data transfer conflicts by monitoring the operation state and then instructs a storage system to reduce the limit width of the bandwidth of a volume from among the multiple volumes. Then, the storage system reduces the bandwidth of the volume in accordance with the instruction from the administrator.
However, multiple transmission resources that cause a reduction in the performance are present in a path from the application to the volume. Example of these resources include Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) groups, processing processors, ports, switch ports, or the like. The volumes that share the resources differ for resources. Accordingly, in the conventional method in which an administrator instructs a storage system to adjust the limit width of the bandwidth, the administrator specifies the resource in which conflict occurs and determines a method of adjusting the limit width of the bandwidth of the volumes that share the specified resource. Specifically, in the conventional method, the process is complicated for an administrator and it is difficult to easily adjust the performance of a storage system.
Furthermore, with the conventional technology that adjusts a copying speed, the completion time of the copying, or the parameter of the front business or with the conventional technology that adjusts the cache size, the adjustment of the limit width of the bandwidth is not taken into consideration; therefore, it is difficult to easily adjust the performance of a storage system by using the limit width of the bandwidth. Furthermore, with the conventional technology that adjusts the bandwidth that is allocated to an application by using the function of a fibre channel switch, the load of each of the resources is not taken into consideration; therefore, it is difficult to adjust the limit width of an appropriate bandwidth. Furthermore, with the conventional technology that adjusts the bandwidth and cancels out the imbalance of the performance, the performance of a storage system is not able to be improved by adjusting the limit width of the bandwidth; therefore, it is difficult to easily adjust the performance of a storage system by using the limit width of the bandwidth.